Have you ever GM'ed yourself?

[Suicycho]

So, I've been feeling the urge to play again, but I don't really want to deal with players; their rules lawyering, their pettiness, their attitudes etc. And I also don't want to have to work around their schedules.

I'm considering playing a solo campaign. I will loosely document it as a "story" as I play, as this will give me the ability to include npc activity, plots and schemes over the course of the game that you're not really able to do in a normal game with players.
I plan on posting the adventure "stories" here if I proceed, to share the experiment as well as get feedback on how I am doing it.

Thoughts?

[flatline]

When I'm learning a new system, I sometimes run through scenarios where I play the player characters and the NPCs in order to get a feel for how the mechanics work.

--flatline

[wyrmraker]

I do this a lot for the 'getting to know you' phase of character creation.

[Library Ogre]

I've considered working up rules somewhat based on Munchkin Quest or the various D&D-branded board games (where you explore, uncover monsters, and try to achieve goals) to play some games without players.

[Slight001]

I ran a duo campaign where myself and another were the only players. We would essential trade off when dealing with NPC's and combat was straightforward with the use of a dice roller being used for all rolls... As I recall we had little use for the roller.

[dragonfett]

All the time when I am bored at work on a break.

[Daniel Stoker]

Well just be careful cause if you do it to much you'll go blind.


Daniel Stoker

[Incriptus]

Only once ... Full Party Wipe ... Never play in a game under that GM again

Well just be careful cause if you do it to much you'll go blind.

I was trying to find a way to make that joke

[Arakash]

To me, a campaign where someone is GM'ing only themselves sounds, in practice, exactly like writing a book/fanfiction for Rifts, especially if you aren't doing any dice rolls.
Have you considered writing a book or even a short story instead?

When I wasn't interested/available for playing any Tabletop games last year, i wrote a Fan/Settingfiction for a Rifts campaign i had watched and found it to be entertaining and thought provoking. Its not exactly the same thing as a book, but I can empathize with not being able or willing to play for a time.

[The Artist Formerly]

To test game mechanics or work out the weird powers in HU. I generate characters, make dice rolls, that kind of thing. Test damage out puts and how much of a beating something can take.

Standard enviroments are the alley behind O'Mally's bar and grill. Targets here can be mobsters, bikers, dirty cops or even soldiers, using generic stats for badguys from the HU book. This is usually a straight up fight test.

The house on fourth street, which is a gang land drug house, again using thugs or a mobster and thugs as the bad guy. This can be a sneak test or a fight test.

Or the ever popular being the maniacs who are beating on that guy's tank test.

[PSI-Lence]

lol all the time when making npc's i have a pretty large stack of npc's from being bored or getting new books and rolling up a few, running mini missions in my head as a story, and rolling dice as needed.

i may start with an idea (and normally some timeline in mind) and often things change from what i had in mind from the dice rolls, rolling up a merc or bounty hunter seems straight forward of a mission but maybe a very bad miss hits a bystander with some lasting consiquence? maybe they flubbed a skill roll while forging documents and got picked up by police? anything can change the idea i started with.

also since i don't always start with whatever the newest timeline is i like to make timelines for npc's i roll up, so if starting a game in say 92PA that merc has just got their contract, but by 93PA they might be in jail (or compleated that and onto another job depending how the rolls went) by 98PA the merc might be in jail still, or released depending on why they got arrested by 102PA they might have died in jail, or got released and become some lawman for a small town,or gave up fighting all together and decided to become a baker after they got out
...or depending on the rolls that first mission in 92PA went off perfectly and by 102PA they run their own merc company.

having a rough timeline in my head for event's helps me who might be in an area players are in at that date.

also with so many plots, mini missions and campaigns in my head that npc's are all upto on their own i tend to let players roam freely, so if a player does something like saying "i don't like the look of this town, i think i'll keep looking til i find someplace else" i don't have to find someway to force the player to go to that town since that's all i planed for, or let them go to another town but have all the same things i planed for to happen anywhere they go, i just let them go where they wants since that first town in 92PA merc just got the contract and might be recruiting help...so they miss that chance, but the next town over there is that illegal book smuggling ring that's been going on since 88PA ...the one after that? might be the one with that retired cyber-doc that's now a butcher...but for the right price they will still do minor augmentation (if they don't get to that town until 98PA though that cyber-doc has made enough connections and bribed enough police to opperate that they have starting having to grind up the removed limbs and sell it as 'cheep meat' in the shop just to dispose of it all.


so i have "GM'ed" myself plenty of times, and it's been while since i checked the forums so may or may not read up on anything you post but seeing the rolls (or at least important ones) would be preferable to me (though probably the minority in that lol) and of course depends on the type of game/story too

[Hotrod]

I've done this. I call it writing a story.

[MaxxSterling]

This is the saddest most loneliest thing I've heard... That being said, Call of Cthulhu has several plots written for you to GM yourself through. They are written kind of as a choose your own adventure story. So, you don't read the plot ahead of time, you just make decisions and flip to the page with the outcome. Of course you have to be honest and not fudge your rolls, but it works I suppose. Personally, I'd just pick 1 other person and run them through with a NPC of your own, but make sure your NPC doesn't influence the story line too much. Best of luck. Personally I'd just play a video game instead.